rt chipsets have been in pclos 2007 for quite sometime now :D

Actually, most distros support them - it’s whether they are conflicted with other drivers, not being initialized, among other hassles. The rt61 thing for instance, in Edgy and Feisty, was that it was for a PCI device rather than cardbus. Then rt2500 wasn’t being sought after by network-manager - solved with Wicd.

So I think all of us in Linux-land ought to give a huge shout-out to Ralink and serial-monkey. ;)

That has been the one that has kept me from installing Ubuntu, my wireless card never seemed to be reliable with Ubuntu, so I went to a Mac lol

TheOFactor: Actually, like any *Nix oem (Unix/Linux), Apple took Darwin/BSD and thanks to its liberal licensing (which I like), they were able to really make sure that Broadcom wireless would work great - no excuses. System76 has done the same already with Intel wireless and now it appears, Ralink is finally being given the support that it deserves in network-manager, despite it always working at the kernel level. :)

I have an intel 3945ABG card and after an update in feisty and also in the gutsy live cd, wireless is broken now. There are several reports on launchpad about similar issues. I’d say ubuntu has some more work to do on wireless yet.

D: In Feisty, sure - wireless sucked from day one with this release. Gutsy however, is better as it has a new wireless stack.

The bug was continued into Gutsy but was fixed in ipw3945 driver (version 1.2.2mp.ubuntu1) as of the 10th of Sept for Gutsy. And I would point out that it’s getting ready to be released. Worst case, install with a hardwired connection and run the updates - it’s there. ;)

Seriously, wifi is ‘overall’ better in this release. Feisty was known to be terrible with wireless, no denying that.

Try Gutsy (once released - not before), let me know if you have success there.

Funny, my rt61 card didn’t work using WPA2 on Gutsy Beta.

Jadd: Wild, which card/revision are you using? Was it a plug-n-no-go or did you try iwconfig to see what was going wrong? And if you are having issues, I would venture to guess you are trying one of those USB sticks, am I close?

Sorry, you’re not. I’m using the rt61 card in my laptop. Gutsy Gibbon non-beta hasn’t solved the problem.
This is what I get from Device Manager in Ubuntu:
Ralink
RT2561/RT61 rev B 802.11g

iwconfig gives me:
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

wmaster0 no wireless extensions.

wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:”"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Retry min limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr=2346 B
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

but ifconfig only displays eth0 and lo, so I’m feeling very confused. And I’m not the only one with this problem, a quick search in ubuntu forums showed others.

Jadd: Give this a shot
http://www.lockergnome.com/nexus/linux/2007/10/18/ubuntu-gutsy-wireless-help

Even though I discovered that it is a network manager issue, not all RT61 cards are using the same driver it seems, so I can only attest to the cards used in the link above.

I watched NM work one day, update and stop working the next, which led me to this tute. Again, cannot speak to the card you are using, but I provided links to two cards that I personally tested and that do not use revision numbers, so they will work as shown in the link. Keep me posted, I want to help.

Thank you thank you thank you. I checked those instructions again, and this time I downloaded the non-stable testing version like you said, and it worked! Thanks!
(I had tried the instructions at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/RalinkRT61 , which didn’t work, but might have had something to do with my success.)

Matt,

Was looking for help getting wireless (RT61 card) up on Ubuntu and came across your blog. Finally got it working - cheers for the help!